On apologies.

SOE has given players of Everquest II Extended a gift of Gold membership for a month as part of their apology for the fact that Van Hemlock, by taking out a Station Pass, cursed their MMO network into several weeks of hiatus. Don’t believe me? He checked out Champions Online for the first time recently too. I warned you all back in 2008, but did you listen?

Anyway, to an altoholic and hay fever sufferer such as myself, this is equivalent to someone coming round and apologising by injecting my tear ducts with pollen. What SOE actually did was open up all the classes I didn’t otherwise have access to, and thus hadn’t concerned myself with. Thanks to this, my altitus flared-up so much that it has swollen and bloated my character selection screen to the point that I can barely see the ‘play’ button any more, and I find my game time in danger of being suffocated by my chronically puffy indecision. More excellently, if I do find a class that I really like, it will be taken away in a month and I’ll have to decide whether I like it enough to actually purchase it, or stick with the original class that I was playing.

Don’t even get me started on the ridiculous amount of bag space to which I now have access. Vast savannahs of storage, where animals roam wild and free, and the remnants of lost civilisations, forgotten by time, wait in their vegetative tombs to be discovered again; bugger the dungeon running, I’ll just go for a wander through my inventory. I just need to be out by the end of the month before it disappears and I’m trapped in my own bag space like General Zod in the Phantom Zone portal.

Don’t get me wrong, none of this is a complaint or a rant but simply bemused observation, because I found the situation to be excellently strange, in a “I’m sorry I took your methadone away for a while, here’s some crack cocaine by way of apology” kind of way.

Well, before any further steps are taken a proper “lair” will have to be worked out… you’ll need permits for that of course… and some sort of writing team will need to get to work straight away on some evil catch phrases for the boys to use…

Hmm, we have to be careful, because as soon as we install Van Hemlock in the lair there’ll be a massively increased risk that the whole thing will collapse in on itself and self destruct shortly thereafter. So some sort of remote launch silo or low orbit satellite, separate from the lair, perhaps.

As for catchphrases, I’ve always been partial to “HE HUNGERS!” in homage to Galactus, who seems to bear an uncannily similar modus operandi.

Now see, if it were LOTRO, you’d at least get to keep the inventory bag space. :> Part of the reason I have 8 alts now is the lure of “unlock all bag space, gold limit, and trait slots permanently” given by the 30-day free VIP with Mines of Moria code.